Community print shop

Although I think I have settled on the topic of letterpress printing for my final website project, I’m still thinking about the particular focus or angle I want for the website and that is the harder part for me. I’m also still tempted by another idea of a website listing and reviewing all the primarily vegetarian and vegan restaurants in Philly, but I saw that various people in the past in this class have already done this and I’m not sure that I have the time and money to try out certain restaurants I’ve never been to all in the next month or so. I’m also afraid it will just be sad to discover that there aren’t more in Philly that I haven’t already tried. And I just noticed that somebody did their website all on vegetarian hoagies in Philadelphia, which is the most brilliant idea! So I have to give up in this arena.

I think I need to stay with my other initial idea of letterpress printing, and start to think more about how to focus the topic regionally. Something I’ve wanted to investigate more about letterpress is how to start a community print shop here in Philly. In Olympia there is an an amazing place called Community Print, a community resource and print shop that anyone can use for free (well, I think now membership is just a small monthly fee) after they’ve taken a short proficiency, and it is volunteer run.

Topic for Final Website

During our first class meeting last week for Internet Information Resource Design, after hearing about the final project of creating a website, I immediately thought that I would like to create a website on letterpress printing.  I mentioned already letterpress printing as something I love, and it has been a hobby and area of study of mine in the past.  I would really enjoy focusing my project on letterpress printing, and I also think there could be a real need for information on this type of printing and resources for letterpress on the east coast, and in Philadelphia in particular.  

I learned all of what I know about letterpress and learned the craft in practice in Olympia, Washington, and when I moved back to Philly several years ago, it seemed there was very little letterpress activity here.  Letterpress and small presses seemed to have had a greater resurgence on the west coast than in the east, but as there is more and more small press printing happening in New York and a little in Philly and other towns in the past five to ten years, I think it could be really helpful for people to have a regional resource on this topic.  I definitely want to create a website that is useful to others, not just fulfilling the requirements of this course.  One of my hesitancies about this topic is that the website I listed in my first posting, Briar Press, is such an amazing and popular and well-regarded site for letterpress printing that whatever I create needs to perhaps have a different angle so as to not end up as just a vastly inferior version of the same....